How to make friends and dribble on people

I started a new job about three weeks after that first fit.

On my eighth day in the office, having strapped in and chowed down on some serious Excel spreadsheets, I was getting on well. I'd sensibly let my co-workers know of my disposition and roughly what to do if I was to have a funny turn, but I'd assured them that this was very unlikely to happen.

Three days later I fell into my (female) boss's lap and had my second tonic clonic seizure.

Luckily, Helen works in the same building, and was quickly called. She ran down to witness her boyfriend dribbling all over the brand new scarf of a helpful first aider Jenny.

Helen quickly took me by the arm and repositioned me on my side.

My colleagues started to apologise to her that they hadn't already done the same, that they hadn't known whether to put me into the recovery position or not, and had decided - on the advice of the wonderful Jenny - to just make sure that I wasn't smashing my face into a steel chair or anything and just let me get on with it.

This is the right thing to do, by the way.*

I was taken to hospital again, and into the comforting office of Dr Kelso and his dulcet Scottish tones. I was pleased to hear that I hadn't suffered from incontinence, which can happen when mind and body refuse to listen to each other. No major embarrassment this time, I thought.

In the weeks that followed, I was surprised by how friendly everyone at my new company was. It was an incredible place, people would smile and say hello and ask how I was all the time.

It took me a while to realise that it wasn't so much that they were friendly, it was that they'd witnessed me fall into my boss's lap, gyrate around for a minute or so, fall to the floor and then stick my hands down my pants. 

Seems that I'd taken trying to fit in too far.


* Helen had moved me onto my side because she thought I'd got a boner. Yes, you read that right. She did surreptitiously check and it turned out it was just my trousers doing their best to ruin me. Suffice to say, a week into my new job I was already known as the dribbling ball-fondling boner boy. Brilliant.

No history of tongue biting or incontinence

In writing this, I'm going to try to write about my experiences of epilepsy, both physical and mental, and - to the best of my ability - how it's affected those around me.

Perhaps, boring as a linear narrative can be, it will be best to start at the beginning. Especially considering how close to the end I am now. Figuratively speaking.

At about half three in the morning of 8 February 2011, I had my first epileptic seizure.

Except, I didn't. Or, rather, it wasn't my first. I'd been having them for years.

What I hadn't realised is that all of those times that I'd had a beer, or a cigarette, or a beer and a cigarette, and I'd felt that funny feeling of butterflies in my stomach and an incredible sense of déjà vu, they'd been epileptic seizures.

(The medical terms vary for what I was experiencing, but my favourite is 'absence seizure', as it's the closest description of what happens. I'm there physically, and I know where I am mentally and even that it's happening, but I can't do much about it.)

Before my first full 'complex' seizure, in 2011, I'd considered these little episodes as some weird tic, a not-particularly-unpleasant reaction to a momentary break in mental solidity.

Rather than react in any sensible manner and go and see a doctor after it had happened for the hundredth time, I'd come up with random reasons as to why it was happening myself...

Perhaps it was a case of a lack of oxygen to my brain when I smoked, I'd think. Maybe it was just the first sign that I was getting drunk. They always seemed to happen on Friday evenings halfway through my first pint, and I'd often not eaten properly to get that week's work done, so perhaps it was just a bit of light-headedness...

The point was, they were over quickly, actually felt quite nice - if slightly disorientating - and didn't stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Namely drinking and smoking.

They became regular enough that I told people about them, and started to point it out when they were actually happening. 

Thus my flatmate Jono, as one would, created a fictional character called Miso Soupy who he said would 'transport' (the word he actually used isn't suitable for this blog - I wouldn't write 'raped') me into the future - referring to the fact that I'd told him about the overwhelming sense of déjà vu that accompanied them.

He would dance around me, singing his patented Miso Soupy theme song, skipping and dancing to the tune of much-loved 80s hip-hop trio Salt N Pepa's hit 'Push It'. Which probably didn't help my bizarre sense of displacement, come to think of it.

In the summer of 2008, my beloved girlfriend Helen took me away for a year's backpacking around the globe.

I have distinct memories of when these little lapses in awareness - or, at that time, what I thought were moments of hyper-awareness - occurred. 

India, New Zealand, Chile and Brazil all stick out in my memory. When I think about it, they happened in all of the other countries we graced as well. 

I can picture exactly where we were, exactly what I was smoking and/or drinking, and my amused excitement at telling Helen that Miso Soupy was following me around the globe.

When I look back now, I thank goodness that they were just that; little, insignificant misadventures into the realms of semi-consciousness. 

If I had slipped into full seizures in a desert in Jaisalmer, trekking on Fox Glacier, fidgeting on a bus in Pucon or twatting about in the waves of Rio, I'm not entirely sure I'd be about now, regaling this half-baked story to a fictional audience of millions.

I was, in short, very lucky that my first experience of full 'tonic clonic' seizure, where one loses consciousness and the muscles spasm rhythmically - what most people would picture when they think of epileptic 'fits' - was in bed, next to my partner and lady-knight in shining armour Helen, relatively safe and sound, in north London.

This is not the first thing I've felt lucky about - for example, I'm an incredibly gifted individual who was most certainly at the front of the queue when Jehovah was handing out rugged good looks - and I'm certain it won't be the last.

Still, I think it's important that I start this story with a thank you to two ladies.

Helen, and Luck.

This is Helen. She is pretty.